


Turn the Page

by archergwen



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Almost re-read Montesquieu for this, Beauty and the Beast AU, Gen, Inspired By Tumblr, Kane is too educated for a 1745 French peasant but IDGAF, Marcus Kane as adoptive dad, and three glasses of wine, dad jokes, gardening puns, holy shit did this get out of hand, informally, roommate discussions of Dante as dialogue, too much Google-ing for a one-shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 10:50:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11229414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archergwen/pseuds/archergwen
Summary: Marcus Kane goes into the forest because he has to - and finds a son. The story is more complicated than that, of course, and paved with puns.(No one ever specified thateroshad to save the day, after all.)





	Turn the Page

Kane goes into the woods because he has to. He’s a self-sacrificing bastard - at least that’s what Abby says when he leaves with goods to sell should he find another bastion of civilization through the forest. Supposedly they have a lord, a protector, but no one has seen him - just those who tend to a flawless administration - and wolves run rampant.

He finds safety in a castle’s gardens, and as his cart horse bends its neck to graze, he reaches out to an overgrown rose bush.

_My mother would love these,_ he thinks.

There’s a roar, rage he does not understand, and then Kane is staring at the walls of a dungeon, unsure of what he saw.

***

He stops questioning the animate objects after the first five visits. They are wary, at first, but he tells stories of life in the village until the teapot - who should be dressed in silks and every inch his lady - shares the horror that took them all from happy and carefree to imprisoned, her and her brother the lord orphaned that same night.

“Our mother loved the roses best,” she explains weakly.

“As does mine,” he replies.

***

Somehow he is moved into a wing of the castle with actual rooms, still without having met the lord. He starts to make himself useful.

“Excuse you,” says the time piece. “I’m the chamberlain.”

“’cept you don’t have real thumbs, do you?” retorts the candelabra, and they fight while Lady Octavia approves the timetable Kane had drawn up.

***

He’s arranging an airing out of the East Wing, his wing, when a presence looms behind him.

Kane says nothing, keeps himself to a very careful non-reaction as he pencils in carefully scheduled time blocks with the various animate feather-dusters and mops. There are a few lively lamps who have figure out how to fluff pillows and blankets, so Kane has them on every room but his. He can do his own laundry, being the only one capable after all.

The presence finally speaks in a gruff, but almost shy voice. “Finn can’t sweep your room.”

Kane paused, then quietly switches the duster with another. “May I ask why, my lord?”

The voice hesitated, “Trysts between staff is technically allowed but discouraged, particularly when one party is trapped in a room and unable to see for herself that the other party was briefly involved with a mop.”

“Ah. Shouldn’t be a problem to keep him away from Raven, then.”

“Do you have any plans for the West Wing?”

Kane does start when his lord quickly speaks. “I- no, no I don’t. I didn’t even think to make one yet-”

“Good. That wing is mine, and mine alone. No one else steps foot in there.”

“Surely to keep it in order-”

“No one.”

Kane inclines his head. “Of course, my lord.” A careful pause as feet start to shuffle away. “When would you like dinner served?”

He hears the smallest sound of surprise and grins. This time his lord is startled. The young man recovers quickly. “My sister usually brings my dinner to the study off the library at half-past seven. Since you have proper limbs, I imagine you can manage to bring it at seven.”

***

“Did the magic include never-ending food stores?” he asks the teapot, balancing the tray while holding the library door open for her.

“No, but there was a vegetable garden used to supplement the servants’ dinners, so my brother tends to that now that no one else needs to eat but you two. He hunts for himself, but I’ll be sure to have Lincoln set aside some meat for you at least once a week. We obviously can’t go to the market, and you can’t without bringing inquiries we can’t answer. It’s honestly a miracle the king hasn’t come searching for the errant Lord Blake.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that frustrated confession, so he just adds, “My thanks.”

Kane doesn’t see the young lord anywhere as he sets the tray down. The Lady Octavia motions for him. “Well come on. He’s not going to eat with you. Bellamy’s self-conscious about his fine-motor skills now.”

***

“What are you doing?”

Kane looks up from the vegetable bed and manages not to laugh.

It’s the first time he’s seeing Lord Blake, and he is outfitted in gardening gear. There’s a wide brimmed hat pulled over his horns and something of a mane. Claws poke out of gloves just a hair too big for him, and he has a trowel in one hand, a bucket in the other. An apron is haphazardly tied over his clothes, but at least the rubber boots seem alright. His awkward gait as he steps closer to Kane suggests that his toes aren’t quite what they used to be.

Lord Blake should look terrifying, and had he revealed himself that first night Kane would be afraid. But now, a smile curls around his lips as he opens his slightly dirty hands. “I’m tending to the garden, my lord.”

“I am perfectly capable.”

“Of that I had no doubt. Since I need them, too, I thought I might help. And if you don’t mind me saying so, my lord, some of these plants need to be re-arranged.”

“What do you mean?”

Kane carefully turns back to the vegetable bed next to him. “Beans don’t like to be near practically anything, but carrots can be a good buffer. I’m clearing out this bed to move the berries over since they should move well. Tomatoes and broccoli are also not friends, so I want to open up a third bed, but that can wait since the tomato plants are still small.”

The bucket and trowel roughly drop to the ground. “I have claws and am doing my best. What more do you want from me?”

There is hurt and pain radiating in the statement, and Kane’s fingers curl around the dirt. He wants to scream that he didn’t ask for this, didn’t ask to be hunted and lost, imprisoned and then hired. He didn’t ask for an animate wardrobe who watches him while he sleeps because she can’t do anything else, though they’ve agreed to Not Talk about all he’s screamed into his pillow. He didn’t ask to discover that his lord got orphaned and turned into a bear-wolf-lion on the same night.

But he is Marcus Kane, and he’s made enough mistakes before ignoring other’s emotions. He is old - or feels it in this house of youths. His pain will keep.

Carefully, he straightens out the strawberries as if they are all he’s thinking of, that the words rolling off his tongue weren’t carefully aligned as he tries to steer this young man through his storm.

“Well, you are an older brother, and some would say that makes Octavia your responsibility, especially with your parents gone. Despite the fact that she’s a teapot, she is hale and healthy. She’s got a brilliant mind - we’ve debated The Art of War against your more recent military textbooks. Perhaps her education in dancing and needlework have suffered, but she can run a household. She is a perfectly accomplished young lady.

“You are also lord of these lands, steward of the villages. The wolf population is a bit overgrown - you could see to that - yet the your people have not suffered these past ten years. You’ve kept the machine running, somehow.”

Kane shifts, moving to the new garden bed. As he continues, he untangles weeds and pulls them from the dirt, laying their roots and leaves in one sad pile. “I cannot judge you as a man - I barely know you and even then only as my lord. I can assure you that practiced habits become easier, but that does not make life easier. If you were to interact in a community you would find that the more good you do, the more good is expected of you. Your peers will always want for more, and if you do not give it they will find you lacking.”

Here, Kane brushes the dirt from his hands and meets Lord Blake’s eyes. “If you falter, it does not mean you are lacking. Humans make mistakes. And when you do, you have two choices. You can be consumed by it - let it take over your every thought as you drown in guilt. Do not do this.”

If Lord Blake is offended by his steel tone, he does not show it.

“You turn the page. You don’t look back. You do better today than you did yesterday. Only then do you become a better man.”

He lets the silence sit for a moment; he turns back to weeding and waits. Slowly, Lord Blake kneels down, trowel in hand, and begins to wrestle with another garden bed overcome with weeds. Kane waits for the silence to grow companionable, for Lord Blake to be at ease, and then-

“Your gardening needs work though.”

Several of the servants come flying out the doors, certain the two are being attacked only to find them both collapsed in fits of laughter. Worries assuaged and sides calmed, Lord Blake looks at his only human servant with a deep smile. “Thank you, ah- um-”

“Kane, my lord. Marcus Kane.”

“Thank you, Kane.”

***

“I don’t care what your tutor thought! Satan gnawing on Brutus and Cassius as well as Judas is elevating Julius Caesar next to Christ! Even though Judas does have it slightly worse with his head in Satan’s mouth, these are two killers of a mortal man punished as severely as the killer of Christ.”

“Think for a precious second, if you will, chamberlain, but Satan - the biggest Traitor of a Benefactor that ever was - is gnawing on the three most well-known examples of his ilk! There have been other such sinners, of course; they’re immobile in the ice. Yet Caesar’s traitors are also traitors to man and society, disrupting secular government instead of divine. Caesar was not as great as God, no. But have not we been told to offer hospitality to all for what we do the least we do to Christ?”

Kane squeaks.

Outside the library, Octavia smiles.

***

“Kane, are you married?”

The new copy of _Lettres persanes_ snaps shut as the man in question jumps in his chair. He thinks of a sharp-eyed widow with an even sharper mind before shaking his head. “No, never have been. Why do you ask?”

Lord Blake sets aside _De l'esprit des lois_ and clearly tries not to look nervous. “I was just wondering how you make someone fall in love with you.”

“Seeking to run off with Montesquieu?” 

He wishes that fur would show a blush. “But in all honestly, Lord Blake, you can’t. You can’t make someone give you their love. Sure, you can play the role they want, but they won’t be loving the real you, will they?” Kane sighs. “It’s not easy to accept, I know. Some people never manage it.

“I haven’t read Montesquieu’s new musings. What word are you translating as love? Agape? Eros? Philio?”

“It wasn’t a question on the reading, just one I’ve had for a while. Thank you. I’d also forgotten there was more than just romantic love.”

Kane nods knowingly as Lord Blake reaches for his cup. “Well if the time comes I’d be more than happy to arrange a marriage for you. Come now! A proper lord does not spit out his tea!”

***

The garden is their refuge. There are no sisters or talking clocks, just the quiet business of nature and soil under their fingers.

Kane is turning over the dirt in another garden bed, prepping it to take the tomato plants, when Lord Blake suddenly leaps forward. “Wait!” Deftly, as his fine-motor skills with claws are much improved, he plucks from the earth a four-leaf clover - along with several of its three-leaf brethren.

He tries to flatten out the crinkled leaves, which is when Kane speaks. “I don’t know if they’re supposed to lie flat. After all, you shouldn’t iron them.”

Lord Blake looks at him in disbelief when Kane adds, “Shouldn’t press your luck.”

He rolls his eyes and groans, “really, Dad?”

They freeze: Lord Blake locking his eyes on the clover, Kane staring at the hoe until he offers, “I’m sorry-” a pause “-was that joke too corny?”

“I give up,” the younger man says, tucking the clover in his apron pocket and standing. He brushes his hands off then throws them in the air. “Puns are the lowest form of humor. I’m out.”

“Don’t you carrot all?”

The garden door slams shut as Kane laughs.

***

All good things end.

The garden flourishes, Octavia joins their dissection of literature and philosophy, everything but the West Wing is brought back to the pre-curse standards, and Lord Blake offers Kane a look in a magic mirror.

He packs a small bag - “I am coming back, my lord, once she’s well.” - and rides back to the village, haunted by his mother’s sick face and the lost look on Lord Blake’s.

He tries to say nothing about where he’s been - he has a moderate sum of funds to bolster the village and help his mother. He should have known Abby would not be content to let things lie like the others. 

Kane did not expect anyone to be eavesdropping, much less spread rumors of a monster.

He did not expect a mob to form, led by Jaha, immune to reason.

That Abby is the one to lock him in his home should have been a little more surprising.

That Clarke breaks him out, that is a surprise and a most welcome one. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, what his plan is, only that his horse can’t move fast enough, can’t outrun a mob.

He darts through the mess - snatching up teacups before they smash and even catching Finn before he lands in the fireplace - trying to give them an edge when he realizes the absolute worst place they could be.

Kane steps onto the library balcony as Jaha almost topples off it.

“Bellamy.”

There’s blood on his claws, and Kane briefly wonders if its his lord’s or his old friend’s. Or maybe it’s Pike’s, who has his sword drawn, not that it’s doing him any good as he lies motionless on the ground.

“That’s enough,” he says, fearlessly meeting those brown eyes.

“Kane, he’s a beast,” his former friend begins. “Grab the-”

“Stop it. You began this mad war, and I’m finishing it.” Kane looks again at the one erroneously called ‘beast.’ “Turn the page.”

Slowly, the claws unfurl from their grip on Jaha’s shirt and the man can stand on his own. Bellamy takes one step back, then another, then he turns away from the villager and starts for Kane.

He roars suddenly, spinning wildly, and Kane ducks under first his arm then the sword in his back.

Jaha is not so lucky.

The blow sends him stumbling back until he tumbles over the edge of the parapet and falls.

He falls unnoticed, for Kane is easing Bellamy to the ground, onto his side.

“I’m sorry-”

“Quiet, no need.” Kane tears at his flimsy coat, hoping the strips will be long enough to wind around a midsection.

“No, no. I’m sorry. They’re my people- he was your friend. I didn’t want to ki- I didn’t want-” He cuts off with a roar as Kane pulls the blade free. “You must hate me.”

Kane gets one piece to stay, but blood is pooling quicker than he can tear so he just starts pressing, kneeling there desperate, hoping Abby will have another one of her moments of impeccable timing.

“You must hate me.”

His voice is so broken.

“I am sad that they are dead,” Kane begins. “A life snuffed out cannot be returned. I am angry they rushed in without thinking, without listening. No one would have been hurt had they asked me about the rumors instead of taking those to be truth. I feel guilty, for I couldn’t resist the pleas for truth from the one person I trusted and now look where we are. I am so, so worried about you. But I do not feel hatred, do you hear me?”

Bellamy slowly nods.

“Son, I could never hate you.”

Bellamy releases a shuddering, wet breath and goes still.

Kane sinks back onto his heels. “I could never hate you. Argue illogically, let weeds overtake the tomatoes, iron your luck, I don’t care.” His breath shakes as it leaves him. “I don’t care,” he repeats softly, eyes falling closed-

Eyes closed, against pain, don’t see a wind stirring, stars descending to stick to Bellamy’s still form like fireflies to a lantern.

Eyes open at a gasp.

A young man is standing, leaning against a parapet with one arm while the other presses to his back, reddened strips of coat hanging between his fingers. His human fingers are bloody; his dark hair is a curled mop on his head. There is a smattering of freckles across his nose. He looks at Kane with familiar brown eyes and breathes, wincing a bit as he does.

“If it was that easy I should’ve had O say she loved me years ago.”

He tries to take a step forward and falls, but Kane is there to catch him, to pick him up and carrying him through the library and out into the hall. He stands beneath a painting of the late Lord Blake and looks over the chaos of newly humanized servants thoroughly celebrating while bound villagers watch confused.

“Ahem,” he begins, voice cutting through the chatter. The servants instantly snap to attention, Octavia pressing through once she recognizes what’s wrong. “Is there a Griffin available?”

Kane always liked Clarke, so when she appears, a shock of blonde hair and her mother’s medical bag under one arm, he decides to give her a job whether or not Lord Blake agrees.

From the way Bellamy watches her as she bandages him up, Kane doesn’t think there will be an argument.

***

“You wanted to see me, Lord Blake?”

The young man looks much better after a week of bed-rest with Clarke paid to fuss over him. (He did quickly learn that she would broker no arguments over his care, and expected to be obeyed - the lord in the sickroom.) (Octavia immediately began taking notes.)

“I did.” He hauls himself to a sitting position and pulls some papers closer. “First of all, enough will all this ‘Lord Blake’ business. You’ve cared for me like a father, and saved my life as well as the existences of all those directly under my care in this castle. Bellamy will suffice.

“Second of all, while I cannot elevate you to a position above mine, I can petition the king to recognize you for efforts above the call of duty, and at least grant you a cottage near the gardens for your use, as you please, no strings attached.”

“Bellamy-”

He raises a hand to cut him off. “I will tolerate no argument. You treated and loved me like a son when to the rest of the world I was a monster, a fantastical creature from magical nightmares. Let me honor you as a son should.”

Kane bows, heart swelling. “As you wish.”

“Of course, I hope you will still oversee the management of the household and argue with me about Montesquieu?”

The tone of his voice creeps upwards at the end, and Kane relaxes, smiling. “I thought we might next read some Virgil, build more foundations of thought and art before we tackle another contemporary.”

“But we’ll order anything new Montesquieu writes?”

“Bellamy, I’m not actually your father; you don’t have to ask permission just because I broke your curse with _agape_ love.”

“ _Agape_? Reaching a bit much are you? If it’s familial love wouldn’t it be _storge_?”

Kane pulls up a chair. “I would’ve gone with _philia_ as the alternative to _agape_. Someone needs to re-read their Aristotle. _Nicomachean Ethics_ clearly uses the former to refer to-”

_Fin._


End file.
